THOMSON’S GAZELLE 
Like their congeners, Grant’s gazelles, Thomson’s gazelles frequent 
both bare open plains and districts where patches of bush alternate with 
open spaces. Whether they drink regularly or whether they ever drink at 
all I do not know, but wherever I have met with them there has always 
been water in the vicinity. Their food consists for the most part of grass, 
but they probably eat the leaves of certain bushes as well. 
I have never seen Thomson’s gazelles consorting together in herds of 
more than from twenty to thirty individuals, but on the bare plains lying 
between Lakes Nakuru and Elmenteita, in 1902, I saw hundreds of these 
antelopes at one time scattered all over the open ground in small herds. 
There were, too, many single bucks feeding alone. 
Of all African antelopes, I think Thomson’s gazelles are, or perhaps I 
ought to say were, the tamest I have ever encountered. On the afore- 
mentioned plains near Elmenteita, they would usually allow me to walk 
up to within a hundred yards of them before taking alarm and trotting 
off, and eight years later I found them just as tame near Rumuruti. Their 
meat is excellent, and their heads — at least, those of the bucks — make 
very pretty trophies, so that large numbers of them are shot yearly by 
both sportsmen and settlers in British East Africa; yet in spite of this, 
they still remain far less shy and wild than Grant’s gazelles, Coke’s 
hartebeests or zebras, with all which species they are accustomed to 
consort. 
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